What about "God"?

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_Roger Morrison
_Emeritus
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What about "God"?

Post by _Roger Morrison »

"God", not unexpectedly on a relgion based site, seems often to be seen as an "either-or" with little centre ground. I think 'pasted' below are thoughts germane to thinking expressed here. It comes from a question asked of John Selby Spong on his site. It has to do with "God" intervening in human affairs, either in mini or maxi...
...explained as natural phenomena? Or, deeper still, should we even think of a God capable of inserting himself into human experience? Is "God" something else entirely?

Dear Hal,

Your question is a primary and essential one and cuts immediately to the essence of theological debate today. Yet it is one that most people who identify themselves with evangelical Protestantism or conservative Catholicism seem to think they can either ignore or repress. They cannot. It is also a question that in order to address it adequately would take a book, not a column.

Sam Harris' criticism of popular religion is right on target. The weakness of his book is that he assumes that popular religion is what Christianity is all about.

The intervening, miraculous God is built upon the old idea of the record keeping Deity who lives above the sky and who swoops down on earth to split the Red Sea, or to rain heavenly manna on the starving Israelites in the wilderness. This is also the God who delights in sending plagues on Israel's enemies, the Egyptians, and drowning them in that same Red Sea.

This is also a God who apparently has not accepted the insights of Isaac Newton about how the world operates. It is a world, not of precise natural law, but of controlled chaos. Most theologians have long since abandoned such a deity.

When people assert that God intervenes in human life to heal, they must explain why God does that so sporadically. When people assert that splitting the Red Sea was a miracle to save Jews from death, they must explain why God allowed the Holocaust that destroyed Jews by the millions. It is not a simple subject.

The only thing that needs to be said quickly is that the idea that anyone knows who God is or how God works is ludicrous. What kind of human folly is that? I do not think that a horse can describe what it means to be human. Humanity is a dimension of life and consciousness that is simply beyond that which a horse can embrace. Similarly, I do not believe that human beings can describe what God is. The realm of God is simply beyond that which the human mind can know. The Greek philosopher Xenophanes once wrote that "If horses had gods they would look like horses!" Perhaps one ought to observe that most of the deities that human beings have worshiped throughout history have looked remarkably like human beings, magnified and supernaturalized. We have no God language to use so we force our God consciousness into human language. Only when that truth is acknowledged and accepted can we even begin to answer your question.

The discussion must then turn to the nature of God, again something we cannot know but about which we speculate endlessly. I believe God is real, but my human mind and human language can never penetrate that reality. So I cannot describe God, I can only describe my presumed God experience and honesty compels me to state that I might be delusional. Only at that point can we begin a discussion on the reality of prayer.

When I wrote a book entitled, "A New Christianity for a New World," based on lectures I had given at Harvard University, I sought to address the issues you raise. The book is almost 300 pages long. It challenges most of the pre-suppositions of traditional Christianity. It seeks to find new meaning for the most traditional symbols. It seeks to move between what I call both the God experience and the Christ experience which I believe are real and the way both the God experience and the Christ experience have normally been explained, which are to me dated, inadequate and generally unbelievable. Your question rises out of that mentality.

I hope this helps though it only scratches the surface of the territory where an answer can be found. I want to assure you that your question is the right question and that you are not wrong or weird to be raising it. Those who continue to repeat the slogans of their religious past as if they are still operative are wrong and they are increasingly weird.

I hope you found it read-worthy. Thoughts? Warm regards, Roger
_MormonMendacity
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Post by _MormonMendacity »

Roger Morrison wrote:When people assert that God intervenes in human life to heal, they must explain why God does that so sporadically. When people assert that splitting the Red Sea was a miracle to save Jews from death, they must explain why God allowed the Holocaust that destroyed Jews by the millions. It is not a simple subject.

Interesting. I see this man is not playing with a truly devout, religous deck. He needs to take some lessons from Gazelam.

Of course, apologetics starts from the position that they are defending a truth, so all they really need to do is provide a plausible explanation -- usually resorting to an impossible-to-question god-reason -- and all that discordant stuff is explained.

What I really got from your quote is that it sounds like he is devolving to the same deism that many of the Founding Fathers believed. "Something" made all this...and we're going to call it "Nature's God".

Even though I'm not so sure there is a Supreme Being, I can live with that definition.
"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder" --Homer Simpson's version of Pascal's Wager
Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.
Religion is ignorance reduced to a system.
_Roger Morrison
_Emeritus
Posts: 1831
Joined: Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:13 am

Post by _Roger Morrison »

MormonMendacity wrote:
Roger Morrison wrote:When people assert that God intervenes in human life to heal, they must explain why God does that so sporadically. When people assert that splitting the Red Sea was a miracle to save Jews from death, they must explain why God allowed the Holocaust that destroyed Jews by the millions. It is not a simple subject.

Interesting. I see this man is not playing with a truly devout, religous deck. He needs to take some lessons from Gazelam.

Of course, apologetics starts from the position that they are defending a truth, so all they really need to do is provide a plausible explanation -- usually resorting to an impossible-to-question god-reason -- and all that discordant stuff is explained.

What I really got from your quote is that it sounds like he is devolving to the same deism that many of the Founding Fathers believed. "Something" made all this...and we're going to call it "Nature's God".

Even though I'm not so sure there is a Supreme Being, I can live with that definition.

Thanks for your comments. The name/term/word/title seems so inconsequential to the fact we are here!

By whatever force, power or means we are part of the eco-system as dependent independependents contributing extracting and sharing ever revolving energies in various forms!! Like "WOW!!!"

And, we don't even have to do antics, sing songs, have secret ordinances, wear special clothes to make any of it happen! IF we wanna do any of the above it should be gratitudinal in celebration of life, not as manipulative of unseen powers.

Whether or not, for whatever reason, practices are engaged in, bears not at all on Universal laws of creation. Sow and harvest is THE law. Time and energy = work. Work produces 'products'. Products of the mind or hands enrich or diminish life quality. So we pick from the pile and enjoy/suffer the consequences of our actions. One size doesn't fit all. Comfort is where an individual finds it. Praise "God"!!!
_Quantumwave
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Post by _Quantumwave »

I hope you found it read-worthy. Thoughts? Warm regards, Roger


I found it very read-worthy. Here's my two-penny thoughts.

It seems that the origination of the “God” concept always comes back to the old explanation that it took a creator to start this whole thing called existence, and this creator had to be omniscient to be able to provide such complicated detail. So it makes sense that such an omniscient being would certainly intervene to protect His elect.

From my POV, I would agree that life did NOT originate by chance, and I am going to use the E-word. My best guess is that all conscious life with progressive intelligence is the result of universal evolution. Evolution complies with an eternal law of nature. The internal workings of evolution cause many to conclude that everything happens by chance. The reason for this is that one of the obvious operating principles of nature is stochastic methodology. To illustrate, consider the example of the ubiquitous dandelion. A single bloom from this guy will ultimately produce multiple dozens of seeds, of which, only the germination of one seed is enough to guarantee survival. Using stochastic processes, nature creates a myriad of different species, some of which, such as poisonous reptiles, spiders and insects, pose serious threat to others as well as to human health and life. Also, myriads of differences occur within species. Some people wonder why there needs to be multiple skin and eye colors, left or right handedness, birth defects, different sexual preferences, genetic propensity for serious illness, communicable diseases, differences in size, and on and on. This does not mean there is a God in control who willy-nilly decides who will suffer and who won’t. What it does mean is that the universe operates in accordance with universal laws based on intelligence that is inherent in nature.

My conclusion that life does not happen by chance in no way implies the existence of the anthropomorphic creator that was invented by the puerile minds of religionists. It can be said with complete certainty that the laws of nature are never transcended. It is only through deception or the false interpretation of these laws that lead the credulous to believe in the supernatural.

It all makes sense if there is no beginning, there is no end, and time is meaningless. Such concepts as ultimate beginning and end are products of the relatively primitive, three-dimensional mind of man.
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